IMDb is trying to highlight gender inequality in movies — but there's a glaring problem

F-Rated grades movies based on female involvement in production and on screen.

IMDb now features those ratings.

They're hard to find on IMDb's site.

The logo makes it look like a mark of failure.

In the past couple of years, an organization called F-Rated has been developing a rating system for movies. It gives the rating to "all films which are directed by women and/or written by women and/or have significant women on screen." If a movie has all three, it gets a "Triple F-Rating."

IMDb, the biggest online movie database in the world, introduced the rating system to its site on Sunday. It's an important move. IMDb gets 250 million visitors per month, and it's frequently used by people working in the entertainment industry, who have the power to change the demographics of movie-making.

The F-Rated version of "Ghostbusters." Sony

The rating was first introduced by Holly Tarquini, the director of England's Bath Film Festival. Since she started the movement in 2014, about 40 movie theaters and film festivals in England have started using it to mark their movies, according to the BBC.

It's an important contribution to alarming inequality in the movie and television industries. In 2016, women comprised only 17% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films, according to San Diego State's Center for the Study of Women in Film. That's pretty much identical with the situation from 19 years earlier, when the center began compiling statistics.

The F-Rating, by highlighting movies that fly in the face of that inequality, is useful for consumers who want to reward movies that feature women and for industry professionals who want to understand trends for movies that feature women.

But it has problems. The logo, for one, doesn't exactly inspire confidence:

The F-Rated system is a valuable way to standardize the recognition of movies that prioritize — or merely equalize — women. But it could be better. Maybe the system can adopt a "W," instead? Or perhaps the Venus symbol, "♀"?

In any case, it should be adopted by as many movie theaters as possible, and IMDb should display it more prominently. Women are all too invisible in the entertainment industry, and it does no good to hide attempts to make them seen.